The hall clock struck one.
Alice rose: she put his hand to her lips, and smiled through her tears:—"I cannot be at this morning's breakfast.—But now—dear, dear, Louis,—best of friends—farewell!"—Her head dropped upon his shoulder, where she struggled with two or three convulsive sobs. He pressed her to his heart, and in vain tried to repel the tears which started to his eyes: they flowed over her face as he supported her trembling steps to the door of her apartment. When he had brought her to the threshold, she uttered a breathless God bless you! and breaking from his arms, threw herself into the room. The door was closed:—he heard her sob:—but tearing himself away, he returned with a heavy load at his heart to his own chamber.
CHAP. X.
The silver gleams of a winter morning streaked the horizon, as the chaise which conveyed Louis de Montemar from the friends of his youth, mounted the heights of Warkworth, and gave him a last glimpse of Morewick-hall, lying in its shroud of mist at the bottom of the valley. The smoke of his uncle's chimney, beside which he had just received that venerable man's parting embrace and blessing, was mingling its dark volumes with the ascending vapours. A bleak and gusty wind tossed their white billows around the ancient pinnacles of the building; but no smoke arose from any other chimney!—; There was no opened window-shutter; no sign of any other of the dear inhabitants being awake. The good old man was then weeping alone, and mingling with his tears, the earnest prayer of solicitude for the preservation of his beloved nephew!
"And the prayer of the righteous availeth much!" said Louis to himself, fixing his eye on the golden disk just peeping above the distant rim of the ocean: "lovers have preserved their constancy, by a promise that each would remember the other when the sun set or rose! Why shall I not preserve my constancy to a better love than that of woman, whenever I look on yon rising or setting orb, and remember, that at those hours my venerable uncle is on his knees to Heaven for the conservation of my soul?"
As the turning of his carriage down an abrupt declivity snatched the whole of the vale of Coquet from his view, Louis thought of his aunt and Cornelia; how, in another hour, they would be looking in vain for his entrance into the breakfast parlour: and, what would be the burst of their grief, when they should be told that he was gone; that he had found the heart to leave them without one affectionate farewell! He almost regretted that he had spared himself and them a pang, which, he began to think, would have been more tolerable than the idea they might entertain, that a passion for novelty had rendered him neglectful of their parting tenderness. The wan countenance, and piteous accents of Alice, next presented themselves to his imagination; and, painful as were many of his thoughts connected with her recent disclosure, he could not but rejoice that her timely remorse, and as critical a resolution, had afforded him an opportunity to make his last act in the home of his youth, one that would eventually repay his vast debt of gratitude to her mother.
These reflections accompanied him over many a heathy track, caverned with coal-mines; and at night, the gleaming fires on their bituminous surface, with their wandering vapoury lights, lit him along moor and fell, till the sulphurous cloud which usually canopies the city of Newcastle, received his vehicle as it whirled down the steep northern hill into the town.
At Athelstone-manor, a few miles south of the city, he met his uncle Sir Anthony; and, as he expected, had to listen to many a rough remonstrance against obedience to so abrupt a summons. Louis did not use much argument in replies, the reasoning of which, good or bad, he knew would be equally disregarded; but with assurances that neither distance nor time should lessen his affection for the friends he left behind, he sought to dissipate his uncle's thoughts from the subject of debate; and so far succeeded, as to pass the remainder of the day with him in tolerable cheerfulness. But when the captain of the vessel that was to convey the travellers to Ostend, appeared at the manor, to announce that the wind served and the ship was ready to sail; the newly-restored good-humour of the baronet was put to the proof: and it did not stand the trial. He burst into invectives against the Baron, for reclaiming his son; against the Pastor, for admitting his authority; and poured forth a torrent of reproaches on his nephew, for so readily consenting to quit relations who loved and honoured him, to become dependant on the caprices of a father who seemed to consider himself rather the patron than the parent of his son.
Louis saw it would be vain to reason with this violence; and that all he could do, was to take a grateful and steady leave of his uncle. Sir Anthony clung to him, mingling entreaties for his stay, with upbraidings for his departure. And amidst vows of entailing all on him, if he would remain; and oaths, to cut him off with a shilling, if he persisted to go, Louis tore himself away; leaving his uncle in an agony of grief and exasperation in the arms of his servants.